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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28624722">Little Green Cricket</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/melonmeelon/pseuds/melonmeelon'>melonmeelon</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Mental Breakdown, One Shot, rewrite from may with a totally different storyline boys</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 10:40:18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>634</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28624722</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/melonmeelon/pseuds/melonmeelon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>I'm sleep-deprived and stressed but here's a new story because writer Melon is honkin' BACK</p>
            </div></td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Little Green Cricket</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em> She would be fine, </em> that was the thing he'd been telling himself for the past thirty minutes, supporting his bearded face with his hands as he leaned against his knees, sitting in such a way that all he saw between the blurriness of his sight was the harsh wood grains in the floor. His daughter would be <em> fine </em>, she was smart, he knew the rations he'd supplied before leaving would be starting to thin a little, but she was with others - the ones who'd raised her too. She had Terra, Marshall, Finbar, Polly, everyone in the village who could easily defend his fierce little girl, a ten-year-old both so kind and compassionate yet so protective and strong. He had never met a smile quite like hers.</p><p>And he was the one to leave her.</p><p>Oh <em> gods </em> what had he done. It was a month ago, the quarter moon outside his burrow-esc campsite looking at him with the same ashamed eyes he looked at himself with whenever he passed a stream. It was his culture, for the child to start living on their own at 10, but was this how the parents of his village always felt? Like they hadn't prepared their kids well enough? He'd adopted Mel when she was 3 - that's already time missed that could have prepared her more. What if he hadn't done enough? Did the people of the village know not to cut the flowers near the bamboo farm because the child liked to play there? What if he should've stayed? What if what if what if?</p><p>
  <em> What if he never saw his daughter again? </em>
</p><p>At that thought, he couldn't help but feel the prickling of tears meeting his dry eyes, a sting filling his head as a sound just as sharp buzzed through his head. Why hadn't he shed his tradition? He was a month away and didn't remember the way back, oh gods what had he done? His daughter was home and he wasn't and through the blur of his tears, he saw the brown of the floor and thought of one of the farmers teaching him how to braid her cocoa-bean-hair, felt the tears on his fingers that held his face and thought of the times the winged girl had brought him out in the rain just to flick water into their coats. He could feel the warmth from his rapid heartbeat wrap around him like hugs and sunlight on his straw hat, felt his own short breaths as he clenched his face gripping his lungs like the memories he had of running alongside his daughter as he tried to teach her to glide. What had he <em> done? </em> He finally had a home where he didn't <em> want </em> to leave immediately, didn't twitch every day that he wasn't burrowing for shelter from the storms outside or jumping from vine to vine with cheers escaping his lungs. He was an adventurer but now he was a <em> father. </em> Gods he'd made a mistake he'd made a mistake-</p><p>There was a bug on his floor. A small cricket, looking up at him with green eyes on a small green body. The yellow ones weren't kind, but the green ones were... Mel had told him that ages ago. She'd read it in the library, a big book in her far too small hands as she stuck her tongue out in concentration before dropping it immediately when she spotted the very bug she was reading about, cupping it in her vitiligo splattered hands and showing it to her dad with joyful cries of 'pa! pa! I found a crawler pa!' She was 7. <em> Gods, </em> it was three years ago.</p><p>And now there was a small green cricket on his floor, and it made him shatter.</p><p>
  <em> Oh, little cricket, why did I leave her? </em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Eyo nerds I'm back</p><p>@melonmeelon</p></blockquote></div></div>
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